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Week 2: Materials
Our primary reading practise will be "Alternate Take: Levon Helm" You might want to take at look at who Levon Helm was, but that is not very important. Read the poem carefully and be ready to recite it aloud --- aLOUD! We will also do a litle exercise with gerunds and read some of Falstaff's monologue together. You are to come up with nominations for your "Salt of the Earth" by Friday. Walker Trimble will be conducting the class on Friday, as Stanislav Oporkov cannot make it. POETRY Our Poem for the week: ALTERNATE TAKE: LEVON HELM Tracy K. Smith New Yorker, 21-9 2009 I’ve been beating my head all day long on the same six lines, Snapped off and whittled to nothing like the nub of a pencil Chewed up and smoothed over, yellow paint flecking my teeth. And this whole time a hot wind’s been swatting down my door, Spat from his mouth and landing smack against my ear. All day pounding the devil out of six lines and coming up dry While he drives donuts through my mind’s back woods with that Dirt-road voice of his, kicking up gravel like a runaway Buick. He asks Should I come in with that back beat, and whatever those Six lines were bothered by skitters off like water in hot grease. Come in with your lips stretched tight and that pig-eyed grin, Bass mallet socking it to the drum. Lay it down like you know You know how, shoulders hiked nice and high, chin tipped back, So the song has to climb its way out like a man from a mine. ________________________ Who is a 'salt of the earth'? William Shakespeare: Henry IV Part 1 Act V Scene 1) PRINCE HENRY Why, thou owest God a death. Exit PRINCE HENRY FALSTAFF ‘Tis not due yet; I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? A word. What is in that word honour? what is that honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible, then. Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism. пер. -- Николай Гумилёв ГАРРИ. Один колосс мог так служить тебе. Дань смерти Богу ведь и ты заплатишь. (Уходит). ФАЛЬСТАФ''(один). Срок платежа еще не наступил, И не хочу я вовсе торопиться. Ну да, конечно, честь меня толкает. А что как в гроб она меня столкнет? Подумать, разве честь приставит ногу? Нет. Или руку? Нет. Так значит честь — Не доктор. Что ж она такое? Слово. А что такое слово? Только воздух. Кто ей владеет? Тот, кто умер в среду. Ее он слышит? Нет. Так ощущает? Нет тоже. Есть она среди живых? Нет, этого злословье не допустит. Тогда на что и думать мне о ней. ''(Шум боя). Однако бьются здесь. Скорей в засаду, Чтоб в час победы выйти с торжеством. ________________________________ Alexander will be reading the following, nasty little poem: Sylvia Plath "Daddy" You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal \And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through. If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through. Here the poet is reading it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hHjctqSBwM